Kikwaakew

Kikwaakew

Joseph Boyden

printed by Coach House Press, Toronto
2012

Table of Contents

• Front Cover
  
• Title Page
  
• Table of Contents
  
• Subscribe
  
• Kikwaakew
  
• About The Walrus
  
• Copyright Page
  

L
ISTEN TO ME, NEPHEW.
Hear me.

Xavier snowshoes, his breath white puffs. His eyelashes hang heavy with ice crystals, so that the stretch of frozen creek ahead glitters and the single line of the spruce up the bank becomes many. Pulling off one mitt, he presses his fingers to each eye to melt the ice. This world can be beautiful. But it has never been easy. He’ll go another hour, him, and then start a small fire and boil water for his tea
balosse
, stir in sugar and lard and some flour. That will keep him going the rest of the afternoon. It’s kept him going for years. For now, he trudges along, occasionally cutting up the bank to where he’s set a wire snare or built a cubby set, hoping for something. A fresh rabbit for dinner tonight would be good. He’s tired of boiled beaver.

He’ll walk the eight or so miles up this creek today, checking his traps as he goes. Tonight he will shelter at one of his temporary camps before crossing through the bush to his other creek and snowshoeing back to his main winter
askihkan
by tomorrow night. Moving is better than sitting, even if the chance of snaring a single hare in this brutal cold is slim.

Sitting by the fire in his camp had gotten to be too much for Xavier. He’d sleep too long, till he felt the laze slip over his real leg, or until he was jolted awake by the dreamt crack of a Mauser or the whine of a big shell coming down into his trench. Now there’s another war over the sea that has no glimmer of ending, one just as brutal in its own way as the first, this one being fought against the same enemy as before. Does no one learn?

He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he’s as excited as a child to be out on the lines. The winter had started off in the best possible fashion. With the first snows, he had come across fisher tracks not a day’s walk from his home. The animal has become so rare that one pelt is worth more than a whole winter’s catch of marten. One fisher pelt will make his year and allow him to buy his twins their own trapping gear and get them on their way. They’re at the age where they’re ready.

He tried everything the first weeks of winter to lure that fisher into one of his traps, using the choicest fish or moose guts tucked deep into the little spruce house of one of his cubby sets. He was extra careful to cover any signs of the leg trap at its entrance, the jaws spring loaded and ready to snap at the slightest pressure. A fisher can smell even frozen meat from a long way away. The secret is to tempt it enough to enter the cubby, only a couple feet high and a few feet deep. To get to the meal near the back, the animal will have to step into the false den and, with luck, onto the flat plate of the trigger. The leghold will then snap shut, doing the work it was meant to.

This is an especially wary fisher, though. Xavier had studied its tracks those first weeks of winter, circling the different cubby sets and trying to find another way to get at the meat. It’s too smart to go the obvious way. And now the tracks have disappeared entirely. He’s worried it has decided to move on.

These few weeks have been hard, even though he’s used to being alone. His Auntie Niska came to visit but then took her sled team back north. Promising she’d return soon, she told him she needed to use the shake tent and offer some prayers. Something’s coming, Niska had said just before she decided to leave. She’s not sure what it is, but it doesn’t feel right. Two nights before she left, Xavier woke up to her shivering in a fit. All he could do was place a rag between her teeth and make sure she didn’t hurt her head. When Niska came out of it, she was weak as a baby. It’s been a long time since one of her seizures. Xavier, he’d hoped they were gone for good.

There’s been no snow for a week, just bright sun above and the frigid temperatures of late January that come with it. So cold that even the marten don’t want to venture out lately. Wind’s going to change, though. And his luck with it. Good luck has been hard to come by the past years. He figures he’s meant to spend his life alone.

Hear me. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

His two boys are due to come and help him with his work any day now, help him build new sets and check the frozen beaver ponds, the more distant marten traps, the rabbit and fox and moose snares, help him pull out and reset his gillnets under the ice, help him with all of the difficulties a one-legged trapper faces. After twenty-five years, Xavier’s gotten good, him, walking on snowshoes. He’s had one leg far longer than two. But anyone who knows him knows the drag of the left leg, the awkward slant of the snowshoe print dug in the snow. He’d be easy to track. He laughs to himself at the thought of the animals getting wise to him and following his trail for once. Maybe the fisher is peering out from the tamarack and spruce at him right now.

A few miles down the creek, he spots a couple of sharp-tailed grouse sitting high in a spruce, their feathers puffed out against the cold so they are round balls. He considers their worth to him on this day, with his pack lighter than he likes and the weather so harsh. Slipping off his mitts and then the pack from his shoulders, he unties his .22 carbine, opens the action, and slips in a round. If he angles himself right, he won’t waste. The birds sit dumbly in the tree, not daring to move for fear they’ll give themselves away. He walks to the centre of the creek so the two birds are lined up.

He raises his rifle, his hands already cold, and sights in on the front grouse. The wind blows slightly from the northeast, and the birds are far enough away that the small round will drop by the time it makes its way to the first bird’s head. He raises his sights just above it, breathes in deep, releases fully, breathes in again, then allows half his breath out. The rifle settles steady in his hands, and he pressures the trigger as lightly as he can. The rifle cracks, splitting the cold day open for just a moment. The two birds fall from the spruce, one to the ground with a thump into the snow, the other halfway down before it gets caught up in a branch. Ahh!
Gi-jisk
! He leans the rifle onto his pack and makes his way up the bank to the tree.

Taking hold of the trunk, he shakes it with all he has, the spruce swaying some with the effort. The stuck bird eventually falls, snow from the branches sprinkling his face, a little of it melting on his warm skin and slipping down his back. He picks up the birds and walks them to his gear. He will eat something other than boiled beaver tail tonight.
Miigwetch
.

THE EVENING COMES QUICK,
in these short days, and Xavier’s glad for leaving firewood by the door of his temporary camp the last time he was here. He’ll remember to collect some tomorrow at dawn to replace what he uses tonight. From the outside, this little
askihkan
looks just like a beaver lodge and not much bigger, but this one rises up on dry land in a snowy mound in the midst of a ring of thick spruce, protection from the wind. The Cree have learned a lot from the beaver, their hard work and how to make winter homes from woven sticks and mud and bark. This one, once he digs out the snow to pry the door open, is much bigger inside than it appears. He can almost stand fully in it, and the fire ring in the middle is big enough to keep him plenty warm tonight, the dried spruce boughs of his old bed now perfect for kindling.

He starts a fire and hangs his kettle filled with snow above it before going back outside to cut fresh boughs for his bed. His home is filled with smoke when he returns. He clears the chimney hole so that it begins to draft nice. He adds more snow to the kettle and unpacks his bag, pulling out the lard and flour, the tea, the sugar, and his enamel cup and plate.

Untying the birds from his pack, he considers laying them flat on their backs, stepping on their wings, and pulling them out of their feathers. He’s hungry, but to waste the meat, even that little, makes him feel guilty. He plucks each bird carefully, keeping the bodies intact. He guts them and removes their heads, then skewers each one on a stick, placing their thin bodies above the fire to cook. His kettle’s boiling now, so he makes tea, adding a spoonful of sugar, then lard, and finally some flour.

After dinner, he rolls up his pant leg to above the knee and unstraps his prosthetic, saying that word in English, after all these years still enjoying the way it spits from his mouth. Earlier, when he first reached the camp, he removed his snowshoes and planted them upright in the snow just outside his door. Niska had taught him as a child to do this so that the dreams that come in the night would be filtered, the good getting through, the bad ensnared in the gut webbing to be burned up in the morning light. Some habits become like prayers if you stick to them long enough.

Rubbing his sore nub, he tries to sleep. But he keeps hearing footsteps near his camp, loud enough, big enough, that he can make them out over his crackling fire. At first, he thinks it might be wolves, their hunger bringing them to the scents of him and his camp. There’s no wind tonight, and the sounds travel. It isn’t wolves. He considers the possibility that some other human, another Cree or maybe a Hudson’s Bay Company trapper, has crossed into his territory. But they all know where his lines are, and he has seen no hints of men nearby. As the night grows deeper and the sounds still echo out every little while, he begins to wonder if it isn’t some of his friends from the war, long dead, come to find him. His tension loosens then, and he begins to doze off, only waking to stir and feed the fire.

Before dawn, he jolts awake. It isn’t a sound that rouses him, though. It’s an image, fuzzy in the darkness as light threatens to crawl pink over the edge of the world. Whatever this is that haunted him last night, it’s out there, and it isn’t a friend. It waits in the trees just beyond where he can see. It is thick shouldered and muscled. Its legs and neck are powerful. He can make out that much in the haze of his half-dreaming. He knows it watches his camp, waits for him to crawl out so it might weigh him, make a decision as to what it faces. Today will be the coldest yet. He can tell by how his breath hangs in the air in front of him, despite the proximity of the coals in his fire.

CUTTING THROUGH THE BUSH
is tough on him this morning. No packed trails to follow, and in the shadows the snow’s deep. He’s not felt fear in a while, him. Something’s watching his movement. There’s no point looking around for it, though. It doesn’t want to be seen. Niska’s done this to him before, when she works her shake tent especially strong. She calls in the spirits of her
dodems
, her special animals, and they come to her. She’s asked them to do something, he figures. Maybe find out why the game is unhappy, if she or Xavier or his two boys have done something to insult them. Whatever’s watching doesn’t feel flesh and blood. Doesn’t feel physical. But that’s what’s scariest, isn’t it?

You’re fine
.